


to scream defiance at a star

by ninemoons42



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Extended Scene, Gen, Heavy Angst, POV Cassian Andor, Rogue One Spoilers, Spoilers, Together in Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-08 22:12:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8865382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Cassian, in his last moments, understands what hope is.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I saw the movie last night. The first thing I thought of really looking at in terms of fanwork was – THAT SCENE. You know which one. The one with the wall of light and the deceptively calm waves and the sand on the shore. 
> 
> This is, of course, incredibly spoilery. But I had to write it. It had to be written. It’s all my feels.

She was trembling, beside him, and yet there was her shoulder wedged firmly into his side. There was her arm, none too steady, slipping down his ribs, caught somewhere in the middle of his torso. Burns on her boots and on her trousers. She was smoldering in places – she’d told him, briefly, haltingly, of holding on by her fingertips. Trapped somewhere high, again, and this time with blue waters that roiled with blood and fire far beneath her. She’d clawed her way back onto the gantry. The job, she’d said. There was a job that still needed doing.

“Thanks,” she’d whispered, somewhere between the satellite dish and the sandy beach.

And he would have reeled back if he could: because she was thanking him? Why? When she’d wrested some sort of hope that would never be hers, that she carried for the sake of everyone else, all other beings and all other planets, wrested that hope from the bloody teeth of her burning desire for vengeance – and she’d taken that hope and carried them with it: wrapped them in it, in hope that was jagged-edged and unflinching and despairing. She’d carried them from Yavin 4 to Scarif on nothing but that vengeful hope.

She was thanking him.

He didn’t know what to say.

He still didn’t know what to say, having heard too much. He’d had the commlink. He’d heard the screams – or the lack of them. 

Kaytoo, all sharp edges and disrespect until the very end, when then he’d had nothing but encouragement. Encouragement that frayed rapidly, shredded on laserfire. Bought them the time that they needed. Locked them into safety. The blaster had come from Jyn. He could never have trusted the droid despite reprogramming him. How Jyn could have known to place a weapon in those black claw-hands – 

Bodhi. He’d been a wreck when they found him on Jedha. He’d been shaking, he’d been nothing if not nervous: but he’d pulled through, he’d found some kind of steadiness, when they had needed him. He’d found the strength to help. And he had died, panic and resignation in his last breaths, with the communications link nearly complete, having given them those last moments, having gotten them through the shield.

He’d heard Bodhi say, shivering and nervous, “Rogue One.” That had been a good call sign. It wasn’t nonsense after all – and they’d done it for the good of the Rebel Alliance. For the good of the galaxy itself, going against orders, going against all possible instincts of safety and living to fight another day. The foolish hope of that name, lighting a beacon for all others to look towards.

Chirrut and Baze. He had no illusions as to their survival. Maybe they could have fought off one AT-AT. Maybe they could have torn through entire divisions of stormtroopers, and elites. But the entire garrison on this planet? The garrisons that orbited above their heads? Even the Jedi would have needed reinforcements. They were only two. He didn’t believe in the Force, but he whispered to it anyway: take those two, he whispered. Shelter them.

And the others? The volunteers. Alliance Command on the very edge of giving up and rolling over, and yet they’d come anyway. They’d sought out Jyn, knowing she would go her own way, and they’d fallen in around him, multiplying his solitary footsteps. He would have gone, Cassian thought, had he been alone: he’d have watched Jyn’s back if there had been no one but himself to do it, all the way from Yavin 4 to Scarif. But the others had heeded Jyn’s desperate call. They had heard her words and known.

Would they be remembered? Cassian gritted his teeth against the pain in his back and the fear in his very bones. Foolish question. There was still the very real danger of those plans being intercepted. All their work would have been for nothing, if that were the case. Worry, gnawing, its claws snatching at his heart.

And Jyn’s, he thought, and he glanced at the woman who was still carrying him. He had to look down in order to see her face; he’d had to look down in order to look her in the eyes. Slight shoulders and scarred hands and the brave blind despair in her eyes, that she had transmuted into hope that she could give to others.

But she had kept no hope for herself. He saw that now. He understood that, the moment she said the word “Stardust”. An incongruously beautiful word in the sterile ugly metal bones of the data vault. She’d said she was Stardust. It had to have been a name from her father, from Galen, and Cassian would blink away the tears in his eyes if he’d had any left to shed in the terrifying here and now: for who was his mother? Who was his father? He had lost them even before he had made his first kill. Six years old and holding on to a blaster that he could barely reach the trigger on. No blood, just a cauterized through-and-through and a being sprawled out dead at his feet. Just the echoes of that one shot, of that one kill, caroming around inside his head.

Jyn had kept no hope for herself and yet she’d taken her father’s hope, she’d rallied the Alliance, had found them hope where there was none to be found, and she was still burning up with that as she stumbled out towards the sands, with his footsteps helplessly following hers. 

He would need to raise his blaster – there was still every chance they would get cut down now, in the very instant when victory seemed like it was just out of arm’s reach – and any moment now, this beach could get swarmed. If stormtroopers came over the ridge, if Alliance soldiers came over – he’d grant Jyn mercy, he thought. He’d whisper his apologies, and look her in the eyes, and wait for her to nod – and he’d shoot her, then shoot himself – 

“No,” he heard her whisper.

His blood turned to ice.

She was lit up, but not by Scarif’s sun. Eyes wide. Mouth moving – was she praying? Was she cursing? He couldn’t hear her. Not a word between them. She was shaking. 

His turn, he thought, faintly, and he fell to his knees. He could do this, he could lend her his strength, when he could no longer take another step. He could say her name. Make her turn his way. “Jyn. Jyn, look at me.”

She fought him, only a little, and then she buckled and he caught her. Held her. He was only going to look at her now. He knew what that unholy light was. It had flattened the planes in her face, had been trapped in the lines around her eyes, had illuminated her with pure dread.

“Jyn,” he said, again.

“The plans,” she said.

“Out of our hands.”

He watched her shake her head. Not a denial. “Was it all for nothing.”

“No. No,” he said, firmly. “You gave them what they needed. They had courage. They had resources. But they didn’t have any hope. You gave them hope.”

“My father’s hope.”

“And he would have been proud of you, for delivering it to the Alliance. It was his hope, and you took it, and you made it yours. You turned that hope into the strength that we all needed. You and you alone, and only the rest of us following in your footsteps.” He shook her, gently, willing her to focus on him. “Even if you fail, even if we fail, the Alliance will still fight. You gave them the strength to fight.”

The sky was beginning to thrum, was beginning to scream, and he could feel the very beach begin to groan. 

Light in Jyn’s eyes. A deadly light. He’d outrun it before, with Kaytoo, with Jyn and the others in tow. They had escaped into lightspeed and safety then. 

There would be no outrunning it now.

Now, he placed his hands on Jyn’s shoulders. Now, he looked her in the eyes. The trembling strength of her, worn out and still holding him upright. Tension in her arms. Lines in her face. Nothing young about her, and nothing but fear now: he didn’t want her last moments to be filled with fear. 

Last moments. What he could see of the water was churning now. The sky itself was groaning. “Jyn.”

“Cassian,” she said.

And she wrapped her arms around him. She was mindful of the places where he was hurting – he didn’t put anything past her – she held him, carefully, gently, as the beach began to quake.

He held her. Tried to take in every detail of her. Shrapnel in her jacket, laser-slashes in her sleeves, the warm weight of her hands on his back, the hitch in her fearful breaths.

She pushed his head down to her shoulder. He went, and breathed against her chest, grateful that she was there. 

He felt her sigh as it ruffled his hair. He would have wanted to curl up around the warmth of her.

A scream in the sky.

Chatter on the commlink: something about _Tantive IV_ , and something about a passenger on that ship.

He reached for the device and turned it off.

“Jyn,” he whispered, or he shouted: for the world was crashing and groaning and he couldn’t hear the beat of his heart, or the rhythm of hers – 

The last thing he wanted to see: her eyes, steely, steady, the tears that wouldn’t fall, and he reached out to touch her face –

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] to scream defiance at a star](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13101903) by [ninemoons42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42), [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins)




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